Mile
Zero

August 28, 2008

Jonathan Blow, designer of Braid, is a smart guy. I think he
makes a lot of good points, and I dig his game. But his reaction to the
game's reception is drastically wrong, as evidenced in his interview
with the AV
Club:

And so even prior to the release of Braid, I go back and I read - I've
read a lot of these blogs, hoping to read good game criticism. And it
was way too much of the English major, and not enough of the Computer
Science major. ... And in fact, often it'll be somebody has an agenda -
like, there was a very feminist-oriented critique of Braid [on
Feministe.us] and it was an author following her feminist agenda and
interpreting the game. Which was fine, but it didn't have much to do
with what I put in the game.

To begin, it's amusing that Blow thinks there have been too many
"English major" critiques, since I've read several people agreeing that
the only reason I could finish the game and enjoy it is my amateur CS
background and left-brain tendencies. I think that's utterly wrong, of
course, but even if it weren't--what's a CS perspective on Braid
supposed to look like, anyway? "Hey, that's a nice switch-case statement
you've got there. My, what a well-crafted particle system." Asking for a
logical system of art appreciation is one slippery step away from the
abomination of Randian philosophy.

Nevertheless, Blow puts too much weight on his own intentions, and
rejects the player's interpretation too handily. He may disagree with
the interpretation from Feministe, but it's not wrong. Likewise,
he may be upset that people did not take away the same message that he
claims to have put in (which seems to be some variant on materialism vs.
faith), but those people are not "wrong" or "incomplete" in their
thinking simply because they've reached different conclusions. Author's
intention is a wonderful thing, but it's not the only thing, or even the
primary thing.

That very ambiguity is one of the reasons Braid works
artistically. What's it about? Who's Tim? Who's the Princess? How do
each of the worlds correspond with the game's overarching theme? Blow
claims that he's tied every aspect of the game to a specific, personal
meaning, and I think you can tell that's the case. But he doesn't get to
define, for each player, what that meaning is. He can say what he
intended it to be, which is not the same, and does not preclude
other, valid interpretations.

(Notably, Blow is a college dropout who double-majored in English and
CS. I would argue that his kind of viewpoint is common to smart,
self-educated people, who frequently look down on the literary criticism
for its vague and 'unscientific' outlook. This is a mistake: learning to
deal with shifting or undefined situations is a primary lesson--perhaps
the lesson--of a higher education in the liberal arts.)

There is, in fact, probably a tension between Blow's outlook on art and
his game design. He writes:

I'm trying to understand true things about [the universe], or to uncover
things about it, in ways again that are less bullshitty than just
writing words on a paper. Because somehow, and I could be totally
fooling myself about this, but I believe that somehow, there is
something more meaningful about creating a system. Because the universe
is a system, of some kind. And writing is not a system.

Well, yes, actually. It is. The study of rhetoric and communication, not
to mention (at a lower level) linguistics, exists to try to understand
that system. Blow, in what's almost a stereotype of computer science, is
uncomfortable with rhetorical criticism, because it's not always
predictive in the same ways that physics or chemistry can be. So he's
designed a game based around puzzles that many people have found too
strict, while ironically surrounding them with extremely fuzzy symbols
and rhetoric. Perhaps since I tend to straddle those worldviews myself,
that's why I enjoy it. Likewise, perhaps Blow himself has lost sight of
that part of Braid in his desire to lock its message down to a
less distressing ambiguity. Take his observation of the game blog
community:

...what's interesting to me is that some people get [the intention], and
some people don't. But that's completely decorrelated from people's
claimed positions in the sphere of commentary. By which I mean, there
are lots of random blog posters on places like Gamespot or NeoGAF or
whatever who show a clearer understanding of the game than people who
are all, "I'm all about games, and narrative and meaning, and I write a
blog just to tell you about how I analyze all these things." Those
people have the same hit rate as your general forum poster.

Yeah, well: welcome to the Internet, where everyone can claim to be an
expert. I'm not even necessarily saying I disagree with him, but it cuts
both ways. The author of an artwork is just as disconnected from any
intrinsic authority as any gaming blogger, or forum poster. This is both
the advantage and disadvantage of Internet commentary: good analysis can
come from anywhere and be judged on its merits, while the analysis from
those crowned as authorities can be revealed as flawed in comparison
(that's why newspaper editorialists should all be fired). Being the
artist, you're entirely welcome to make enlightening statements about
why you put something together the way you did. And I'll take that
viewpoint under exactly the same consideration as I do everyone else's,
because the art itself stands alone.

But like I said, I think Blow's a smart guy. He's thought about this a
lot. I'm optimistic that he'll figure it out eventually. And I look
forward to what he's capable of making once he does.